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For nearly three years after allegedly orchestrating a “highway ambush” that resulted in the slaying of an Interstate 35 motorist, Latray “Pooh” Whitley was a free man, prosecutors acknowledged as his murder trial began Wednesday.

There's a reason no witness stepped up to help police, allowing the case to initially go cold, Whitley's cousin explained to jurors.

“It ain't what we do,” Alvin Clark mumbled from the witness stand in 186th state District Court, reluctance evident in his voice as he pointed out his relative as the killer.

Whitley, 24, was arrested last August in the November 2009 shooting of Corey “Gumby” Cumby, 34, as both left Club Studio, a bar, at about 3:15 a.m.

Prosecutor Tanner Neidhardt didn't mention a motive for the shooting during opening statements. But the men were from separate East Side housing projects that were known not to get along, Clark said.

“I heard shots and I ducked,” Clark recalled, explaining that he, the defendant and Cumby were traveling south on I-35 in separate vehicles near the Walzem Road exit. “I seen (muzzle) fire coming out the car (in which Whitley was a passenger). I punched the gas.”

Moments later, the defendant's car pulled up alongside Clark's Cadillac and opened fire again, he said.

Another reason Clark avoided police was because he “wanted revenge,” he said, explaining that he only cooperated with detectives after they eventually approached him.

Cumby died from a single gunshot wound that pierced his heart, prosecutors said.

Jurors have no reason to believe Clark or a yet-to-testify witness who's expected to say the defendant bragged of the killing, defense attorney Juan Aguilera said during his opening statement.

Clark is on federal probation for a cocaine charge, while the other man, Reginald Green, is an inmate at the infamous supermaximum security federal prison in Colorado.